Talk:Quileute language

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Morphology[edit]

Mithun drew her description of these special forms in Quileute from Frachtenberg (1920, her 1920b), although she mistakenly attributes them to "Frachtenberg (1917)"; her bibliography includes Frachtenberg 1917a, 1917b, 1920a, 1920b, and a half-dozen others, but no "1917".

The phonological representations in § Morphology appear here filtered through several systems of notation: the one Frachtenberg (1920) used in his article that Mithun (1999) drew on; the one that Mithun translated his notation into; and the IPA that is used in this article, in the Phonology section as well as this one. I am responsible for this second stage of translation, relying on both authors' textual descriptions as well as Americanist notation.

Frachtenberg Mithun IPA
ʟ ɬ ɬ
ts! t͡sʼ
s s s
tc č t͡ʃ
k k k
χ

--Thnidu (talk) 23:35, 9 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Prefix system[edit]

"Quileute features an interesting prefix system that changes depending on the physical characteristics of the person being spoken of, the speaker, or rarely the person being addressed.[7] When speaking of a cross-eyed person, /ɬ-/ is prefixed to each word. When speaking of a hunchback, the prefix /t͡sʼ-/ is used. Additional prefixes are also used for short men (/s-/), "funny people" (/t͡ʃk-/), and people that have difficulty walking (/t͡ʃχ-/).[8][7]"

This seems dubious at best, considering the primary source is from 1920. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Auvon (talk) 00:49, 23 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It seemed extremely dubious to me as well when I initially read it, but I tracked down the Mithun source, and to my very great surprise found that it actually does report this phenomenon (although that's not to say that the description is necessarily accurate, I suppose). Mithun compares it (as far as I can remember; I read it over a year ago) to the use of lisping in contemporary English to (offensively) mock a gay person when quoting or even discussing them, regardless of whether that person has a lisp. It may be that this feature of Quileute does exist, but is perhaps very marginal, like Mithun's English comparandum. RH 22:09, 14 July 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.162.0.41 (talk)